Cooking with my Girls

I LOVE cooking. It's one of the things I learned during my childhood when I hung out with my grandmother so much. She would make everything from scratch. I never once saw a box of anything "pre-made" in her kitchen. It was so much fun to help her make cornbread, batter chicken and especially help with her Red Velvet cake.

We would cook and cook and be in the kitchen all day. It was so much fun to me.

Now I'm passing that love of cooking down to Emma. She's around the age I was when I started cooking with Grandmother. I'm so happy that she wants to learn :-) Makes me tear up a little because it reminds me of my grandmother and the special times that we had.

Today we made Blue Cheese and Fig Tartlets. Only she and I liked them turns out-but we didn't care ;-) Tonight we are making Parmesean Crusted Chicken and veggies and salad. YUM! Tomorrow it's pot roast and I'm going to have her help me make Yorkshire Pudding too.

And of course there's plenty of my homemade sweet tea to go around too....

Compassion

I completely believe in the "Pay it Forward" mentality. I have seen it work personally and all around me.


I always try and help someone else if I feel like they need it. I practice this in business as well as my personal life.


On Good Friday, I had stopped at my sometimes usual gas station on Piedmont near Sidney Marcus for gas for the weekend of soccer games here and there with the kids. I had $20 in my wallet to buy more lottery tickets-just to hedge our bets. I had planned on going into the store after filling up and purchasing them. I was excited-the lottery was over $80M. Surely we could get even a small piece of that right?


As I was about to get out of my car I see an elderly man walking towards my car. This particular intersection is famous for day workers, etc. so I thought to myself "oh gosh please don't bother me and just go away". With recent abductions featured on the news I get scared so much easier these days-and a girl can't be too careful. So I rolled down my window just a bit and the man began to tell me a story...


He said his wife and he were victims of a house fire and had no homeowner's insurance. Sure enough an elderly lady stood right on the sidewalk in front of me with a cane and what looked to be belongings on a wheeled cart. They were decently dressed and looked pleasing enough. He then went on to tell me that they were put up in a hotel by the City of Atlanta but could only stay there a week under the city's provisions until they had to find semi-perm/perm. housing elsewhere.



The man went on and on without asking me for anything. It was almost as if he just wanted to tell his story to someone. Although I knew he wanted money I felt I needed to hear what he had to say.


So the $20 that I had planned on buying lottery tickets with-went to he and his wife. She waved to me and said "God bless you baby" when he told her what I had given them.


The older man could have been a con-artist feeding me a line. He could've been giving everyone the same line all day long. I'm the biggest skeptic on the block and trust me that was going through my mind the entire time I was engaging in conversation with the man. 



So I invested in Karma on Good Friday. I hope it helps he and his wife out and that it starts a chain reaction of people helping people in some small way in this world. That one day he and his wife will be on their feet and can help someone else and remember that someone helped them at one point when they were down and out too....